Baseball style caps are a very popular item. Caps of this type can be made more comfortable in hot weather by being formed in part from an open meshwork. Such a cap will, however, be uncomfortable in rain or cold weather because of its open structure. Other baseball style caps now in common use are formed from ordinary cloth without openings but on a warm day they often feel hot enough so that the user is quite uncomfortable wearing them. Some caps of this kind become uncomfortable for the user after they have been worn for a time. This occurs particularly when the cap includes a rigid or semi-rigid material in its construction. Attempts have been made to provide a cap or hat with a provision for moving one or more parts of the cap to render it more useful. Many of these attempts have not provided a commercially acceptable design that was found to be in demand by the consumer. To be useful, the convertible cap must be comfortable as well as rugged in construction and adapted to be converted easily from one form to another.
A major objective of the present invention is to provide a comfortable baseball style cap which provides excellent air ventilation during hot weather but which can be quickly converted by moving a portion of the cap to provide a sheet of cloth material in the nature of a divider to underlie the mesh portion of the cap during cool or inclement weather. In carrying out the invention it was found that it was desirable to find a way of making both the mesh portion of the cap and the movable divider portion both very soft and comfortable when resting against the head. It is also important, although not utterly critical, to include a provision which allows the main body of the cap and the divider as well to be increased or decreased in size as required to fit heads of different sizes. A further object is a provision on the lower edge of a movable divider member to serve as a comfortable band that will engage the forehead when the divider is deflected to a forward position or to engage the rear of the head when the divider is deflected to a rearward position and to provide comfort for the user when in either position, that is, engaging either the forehead or the rear portion of the head.
In the course of developing the present invention it was found that it is highly desirable to provide a movable sheet of cloth within the cap and to find a way to assure that the divider member will conform automatically to the inner surface of the cap in either one of two positions. I refer to this as a provision for making the movable sheet member self-conforming. The term "self-conforming" herein is used to mean that the movable portion of the cap will have a tendency to automatically conform to the inner surface of the cap when moved to either one of two alternate positions therewithin.
A further objective of the invention is to find a way to provide an adjustment means enabling the cap to adjust to heads of various sizes and at the same time automatically adjusting the size of a movable divider sheet underlying the rear crown portion of the cap so that the crown of the cap as well as the underlying divider sheet both can be adjusted at the same time to a particular head size. A further object is to provide a feature allowing the self-conforming divider to be held in a forward or a rearward position by means of a bi-stable member operatively associated with it to keep the divider member stable in either the forward or the rearward position. In this way the bi-stable member can be used to yieldably bias the divider sheet in either its forward or its rearward position.
These and other more detailed and specific objects of the invention will be apparent in view of the following specification and appended claims which describe but a few of the various forms of the invention by way of example .